Father loves me
by Elithien
Summary: Father loves me so that he would never release me. He said that neither mother nor I could leave, and that if we did, he would come for us. We could not hide from him. -- Maeglin.


**Disclaimer:** I own nothing. All taken from the Silmarillion.

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Father loves me.  
  
He never told me, but I knew that he did. I knew by that sparkle in his eyes as he watched me in the smithy, that silent nod of approval when I offered him my week's worth of labor._ I am proud of you,_ that sparkle whispered to me as he watched me. _Maeglin, my son, I am proud of you.  
_  
Father loves me so that he promised to fashion my skill after his own, teach me all he knew and take me to the dwarf-kingdoms. He promised me that I would be a better smith than he was, I would be the greatest. He would pour me hot into the cool mould and watch me set into something beautiful and perfect. Beautiful and perfect.  
  
He didn't see the sun to be beautiful or perfect. He loved me so that he made me shun it. "The sun is but another evil brought to our lands by the Noldor," he told me the day we came to clearing and I saw the light. Mother always disobeyed him; she took me to see the sun.  
  
Father loves me so that he would never release me. He said that neither mother nor I could leave, and that if we did, he would come for us. We could not hide from him.  
  
Mother became more silent, more recluse every time he reminded us this. She slowly changed into some other woman, not the same who ran with me between the trees, who hunted rabbit with me, who waywardly took me to the borders of the wood to drink in the sunlight and breathe the fresh air. She only came back when we spoke of the world outside of home.  
  
"The world is not dangerous, Maeglin," she whispered to me once with tear filled eyes. "But your father loves you so that he does not see this."  
  
Father loves me so that he came after us when we ran away. He ventured out of his dark woods and walked the plains under the sunlight to take us back home, to shield us from the dangerous world, to hide and defend us from mother's kin. He followed us across Beleriand, through the mountains and into Gondolin.  
  
He is normally of a cool temperament, but sometimes father loves furiously, passionately. If I were half the son I should have been, I would have taken the simple, small and fulfilled life of metalwork under a safe twilight. Father loves me so that he thought he could save his self and I with a poisoned javelin.  
  
Father loves me so that he cursed me before he was cast of the cliff, shouted at me this last once to remind me of our time at home, remind me that I was his. And maybe if I were half the son I should have been, I could have saved both him and mother.  
  
Father loves me so that he will never release me. He loves me as such that not even death could part us. His pale face was in the moon, his voice in the ringing of cold metal blades. He watched over me during the day, he whispered to me in the night. He promised me that we would be together again, he, mother and I. He praised me for my work in the smithy and he scowled at me when I spoke to Turgon. He whispered warnings of the future to me at the coming of Tuor. He saw the evil in Idril and he kept her away from me.  
  
Father loves me so and he saw how I ached in Gondolin, how I was lonely, how the grief shadowed my heart. He saw Idril and her cruel silence. He saw her and gave me the strength to see the truth and how there was only one way where my life might be complete and whole again, as it once was long, long ago in the twilight. Father gave me the strength to betray Gondolin.  
  
Father loves me that he will never release me, and good that that is so for it was his arms that caught me the day I fell, when Idril screamed at me, when Tuor pushed me. Father loves me so that he is there for me, no matter what wrong I have done to him. I am his, his son, his flesh and blood.  
  
Father loves me so that he will never release me. And try as I might, I cannot release him either.  
  
I somewhat love him too.


End file.
